Editing Bronze Age (section)

==Americas==
Agriculture started up a bit latter in the Americas than in Eurasia or Africa starting with Squash in Mexico and [[Potato]]es in the Andes 10,000 years ago and taking until about 6,000 years ago to come into it's own as new cultivars were domesticated. By 2000 BCE Gold Smelting had begun in the Andes followed by copper smelting by 1100 BCE and limited bronze-working was under way by 500 BCE. In Mexico, metalworking had begun by 800 CE with copper and gold, but even with limited metallurgy both regions did produce sophisticated civilizations which had evolved along their own courses in isolation from Eurasia.

In the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Maya people gradually rose and really came into their own around 250 CE. They were not a single nation, but a collection of city states, some of which would make alliances or conquer their neighbors from time to time. But despite their lack of beasts of burden or metal tools, the Maya did build some sizeable cities with large pyramidal monuments, raincathers and worked out a system of writing and some fairly advanced mathematics and astronomy. Unfortunately they went into decline around 900, never quite collapsing but they were definitely diminished. Exactly why this happens [[skub|is unknown and disputed]], though a new power would rise to the West.

Around 1250 or so, a bunch of people called the Aztecs moved south. As the story goes, these migrants were looking for a place to settle following a prophecy that they'd find it when the say an eagle eating a snake on a prickly pair cactus. Eventually they found the sign, on a small island in the middle of a lake. Despite everything they built their city of Tenochtitlan in that lake along with a bunch of farms on reed mats. By 1428 the Aztecs got into some alliances and went a conquering, becoming an Empire. They were a Feudal Society with lords and hereditary warrior classes and they could field vast armies which they used to extract tribute from their rivals, including captives to either work as slaves or be sacrificed.  Their city never really died; ancient Tenochtitlan today sits at the very center of Mexico City, and many colonial era buildings were built from Aztec ruins.

[[File:Pachacuti.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Pachacuti, Sapa Inca. Looks a bit like [[The Emperor|Big E]] ]]
To the South, things went in their own unique way. See the Andes are the second tallest mountains on earth and so even though they straddle the equator it can still get cold up there in the thin mountain air. It also varies a lot with Rain-forests, glaciers, cool peaks, grassland, scrubland and desert all packed up real tight. There were a bunch of cultures rising and falling and generally doing their own thing. One these was the Kingdom of Cusco, ruled by a dynasty that claimed to be the children of the Sun God Inti. In 1438 got a new leader called [[The Emperor|Pachacuti (Reformer of the World)]] who pulled off a successful [[Great Crusade]], forging ''Tawantinsuyu'' ("The Four Parts Combined") or more commonly known as the Inca Empire. 

The Inca Empire was freaking huge, covering 2,000,000 km² linked together by a vast network of roads and way stations. If you bordered them, the Inca would offer you gifts and promise you that you'd keep your old position of power and get access to stored wealth of the Empire in exchange for having to contribute to Tawantisuyu. If you refuse the Inca would send forty thousand men with maces, bows and spears to murderize you and put someone better in charge. Most people went with the former. They did not have a system of writing but they did have something roughly similar for keeping records called a Quipu, basically a set of strings with a code of knots tied into them.

Unfortunately for the Maya, Aztecs and the Incas, First Contact with Europeans was disastrous. Diseases ravaged their population, soldiers with horses, guns and steel armor and weapons could best their armies with obsidian swords and bronze star-head maces and they caused a lot of political instability and exploited it to dominate.